Review of Indra's Net

Namaste

Indra's Net: Defending Hinduism's Philosophical Unity by Rajiv Malhotra
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In the first part of Indra’s Net, Rajiv Malhotra traces the lineage of scholars who posit a “neo-Hinduism” invented by Swami Vivekananda. The most recent of this lineage is Anantanand Rambachan of St. Olaf College, who claims that Swami Vivekananda’s reliance on direct experience is incompatible with Shankara’s reliance on sruti.

Malhotra then proceeds to show that Rambachan’s concept of Hinduism is too narrow: namely, that Shankara did not dismiss direct experience out of hand and that Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta is only one system of knowing within Hinduism. Malhotra discusses how Hinduism has evolved over time and places Swami Vivekananda squarely in the Hindu tradition.

Malhotra then discusses “digestion” of Hinduism. By digestion, he means the process by which people absorb the parts of Hinduism that they like and excrete (my word, not his) the parts they don’t like. A good example is the de-contextualization of yoga from Hinduism, whereas the rest of Hinduism is trashed.

He introduces the concept of “poison pills” to prevent the “digestion” of Hinduism into other frameworks. These poison pills include characteristics of Hinduism (karma, re-incarnation, embodied knowing, integral unity) that cannot be reconciled with the traditional tenets of Abrahamic religion and force the spiritual seeker to make a choice among religions.

Indra’s Net is more accessible than Malhotra's book An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism; however, Being Different and Indra’s Net re-enforce one another. I would have to read both books several times to fully understand the concepts that Rajiv Malhotra introduces. My 3-star rating is less about the merits of the book and more about the limits of my understanding.


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